


I Loved Her More Than Spring

by JonsaInTheNorth



Series: Heart of the Seasons [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 22:40:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18433568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JonsaInTheNorth/pseuds/JonsaInTheNorth
Summary: Jon agonizes over his feelings for Sansa.





	I Loved Her More Than Spring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ansli12](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ansli12/gifts).



> Part two of a three piece set I posted years ago, deleted in October 2018, and have now edited for even more angsty feelings. This is dedicated to @ansli12 here on AO3 for her lovely comment on the last part, which entirely made my day!

**Six days after Bran whispered the name of his mother in the godswood, he decides to leave Winterfell.**

He is tired as he falls into his bed; not of the work to fix the keep, but of the work to keep away from Sansa. He feels like she is always there, offering advice besides him at the Lord’s table, sitting and sewing as they convene in his solar each night, and joining him on his morning walks across Winterfell’s ramparts. The ramparts have become their place, the place where they can go alone and speak without a court of Northern lords and ladies to overhear their words.

When they are together, Sansa brings him to smile when he wants to brood, she causes his laughter with gentle quips, she is family in a way Jon never thought to have it again. But Bran’s words are not as helpful as he thought they would be, for they mean his craven thoughts don’t come just from his heart but from his blood instead. 

 _Targaryen_. He mouths the name in the dull shadows of his chambers, a strange word upon his lips. Light flickers from the glowing embers in his hearth, tossing shadows across his ceiling like the jagged spikes on a dragon’s back. Jon stares at that dancing darkness, picturing her gentle face and calm gaze and burning hair, hoping to have her company when he breaks his fast in the morning. Maybe then, they can speak of things he’s left unsaid. _Maybe then, I can tell her that I -_

He rises, unable to sleep, unable to think the words he longs to say. It is the hour of the wolf, and the halls are grey as night. He aimlessly wanders through his door and round the halls of Winterfell, the seat of the Northern King. Jon stands behind the chair that serves as the throne of the King in the North. _But am I really, if my father isn’t of these lands?_

When finally he finds himself outside Sansa’s door, he is hard pressed to move at all. _What if I remain here until the morning? What would she say to find me asleep at her feet?_

Jon stares at the door to the Lord’s Chambers, eyes tracing each individual line in the rough wood. In the center is the sigil of House Stark. _My father’s house. No - my mother’s house._ He should leave, he knows, but some force compels him to raise his hand and nearly knocks. An inch away from the door, he drops his hand. Jon pivots and storms into his own chambers once more. _But it is not mine. I am not a Stark._

He cannot handle this proximity to her, not while his depraved heart aches to hold her in his arms and make her smile by sharing something besides bad jokes and fond memories. Jon imagines Sansa pressed against him, flushed and panting. He swallows, for this is not how a Stark would think about their own sister. _Maybe I am a Targaryen, after all._

On the morrow, he will leave for his aunt’s capitol in the south, to lend his hand and offer assistance to forge an alliance for the North. He resolves to embrace her for family and keep his distance from the Stark home, so as not to destroy Sansa with his unholy madness. In time, he will heal of his unfortunate love, purify his Targaryen heart and come back stronger.

* * *

**Two months later he marches North at Dany’s side.**

Sansa writes him letters, sends ravens with the joyous word of Arya’s arrival in Winterfell and updates of the progress on the rebuilding of the castle walls. He tries to ignore the wistfulness he imagines in every swooping curve of her hand writing, in every “ _Dear Jon_ ” she scribes. But there is no use, now that he knows that he is not her father’s son. The yearning for her heart and her hand pulses within him, faster and hotter than the blood in his veins.

Sansa proclaimed him brother, would have named him a true Stark, and he repays her with a devilish desire to taste her lips and hold her in his arms. At the news of his true parentage, the Queen named him a trueborn Targaryen and her one true heir. He gave up one crown for another, and yet Jon cannot be happy here.  _Not without her by my side._

Daenerys asks what causes his dark brooding, but he cannot admit even to her, maybe the only one who would expect such strong devotion for a sibling. The first time, he tells her he packed in haste and left behind his direwolf cloak, that last connection to his sister. In response, she reminds him that he has a new sigil, now, and presents him with gifts decorated with red dragons.

Later, Jon makes further his excuses for missing home, when really all he misses is her. He would trade all of Winterfell, all of the North and all of the world, to see Sansa happy, but that was never his bargain to make. She was a Lady who had saved herself and would do it again, if need be.

When Jaime Lannister joins their ranks, he remarks that his love for his sister ruined them both and all these Southron lords agree. Jon nods his head in agreement, but cannot help but think that it is different between him and Sansa. He does not seek to rule the world with her by his side, like Cersei had with Jaime. He only wants to see her rule him.

Finally, he picks up a quill to respond to Sansa’s many letters, but all that he can pen to the page, over and over again, is:  _I love you._

Jon wishes to send it, to tell her of his heart, but he cannot let her know this truth. Too much hurt would come of the twisted piece of his godsforsaken emotions, too much pain from the way he dreams of her, naked and in his arms at night.

In the end, he never responds to Sansa’s letters.

* * *

**“A fortnight past I met with your cousins.”**

Dany’s words startle him from his restless sleep besides the fire of this great keep that houses them for the night. He smiles to see her, but his heart is heavy, for he has been dreaming of home.

Jon strains his eyes against the gentle, orange glow of the candles to see her face. Her cheeks bloom pink roses and her smile is curved like a shortbow. Dany looks almost soft in this lighting, dressein a white fur gown designed for riding on her dragon, but there is still a dagger-like sharpness to her cheekbones and the arch of her white brows.

“Sansa is a lovely woman, Arya even stronger than you said, and both as fierce as direwolves.” The Stark sigil, once that of his dreams, although he would have it as a brother, not husband. Now he knows he will never have it. Jon is a dragon and as Dany says, _O_ _nly a dragon can love a dragon_.

“How are they?”

He will not say more, cannot. Dany is quite taken with the young women his sister-cousins have become, and would call them South when this war is won. For that, Jon hopes it never ends. They deserve peace in Winterfell, safety behind the walls of their home. And the safest place from Sansa is far away from him. She must always be far away from him.

For when the Dark Night is done, he will return. Yet still when he dreams of home, he does not dream of Winterfell’s keep or the great wolfswood, but only Sansa. Home will always be Sansa.

* * *

**Dawn breaks twelve days before the new year begins, he is met with another option.**

He flies Viserion South, a prince upon the last living dragon. It is Tyrion Lannister's suggestion, that Jon to help them rule the world now that it needs to be rebuilt. And rebuild it they shall.

In the day, Jon throws his heart and mind into forging a new nation, better and stronger than before. And ruling is harder than killing the wights and White Walkers ever was. There are fields to sow, roads to rebuild, courtiers to meet, people to feed. Dany sets her Unsullied under his command and he rides out with the men to oversee every project imaginable, from building wells and dams to chasing off raiders that try to harass the smallfolk.

When he is in the capitol, he is met with a dozen requests at any turn outside his chambers in the Red Keep. Lords and Ladies of the Seven Kingdoms flock to King’s Landing to court the Queen and curry favor with her nephew and heir, to learn what would please them both most. They gift him jewels and silks and saddles and swords. But the poor are hungry and starving; some still shiver despite the returning warmth. When Jon clarifies his great desire to help the people, the courtiers send wains of grain from the Reach, wine from the Arbor, and salted fish from the waters of Dorne.

This work of kingdom rebuilding is never ending and it is a perfect distraction from the later hours, when Jon is plagued with dreams of his greatest desire, the one he will never share with the people of Westeros.

For in the night, he dreams of a red wolf dusted with new fallen snow standing beside a black pool in an empty godswood.

* * *

**Twelve weeks after he hears of Sansa’s suitors, Jon finally accepts that he is needed elsewhere.**

Daenerys finds him shoving tunics and trousers into his saddle bags as he prepares to flee. An upstart young lord from the Vale, a Harrold Hardyng, has been exiled from the North for attempting to kiss the Lady of Winterfell. Half the Northern lords saw the violation and nearly all wrote to King’s Landing to beg Prince Jon’s help to save their Lady. For what love you once bore your cousin, my lord, please come protect her from these Southron fiend.

He does not hear her enter the room, only looks up to see her standing in his doorframe. She approaches and sets her hand gently on his shoulder. Jon looks at Dany, dressed in soft grey with her hair falling in curls across her shoulders. “Don’t leave me, Jon.”

Her voice is so soft and sincere that he nearly misses the fire burning bright behind those Targaryen eyes. But then he thinks of Sansa, alone but for Arya and beset on all sides by lords seeking her hand and her titles, that he cannot help but frown.

“Please, I need you.” Dany cups his face in her hands.

 _She needs me too. My sisters both need me too_. Jon thinks. There is a sharpness to Dany's beauty, dangerous as any glinting dagger. His observation could last a century or a second, Jon doesn’t know or care.

She holds his gaze, those beautiful purple eyes steady and unyielding. “Please. Leave the North be, lest you leave me to my own wrath.”

He hears the threat, just like he does each time a Tyrell complains of the Northerners' demands for food and workers. Everyone ignores the sacrifices of the North, the entire kingdom that defended all the rest from the White Walkers. Even still, Sansa sacrifices herself and her heart to keep these suitors from all around at bay, to keep their grain and trade coming to feed the hungry mouths of her people.

He drops the tunic in his hands, letting the grey fabric drift in slow motion to the cold stone floor.

“Yes, Dany. I know.”

Jon pulls her in, tight against his body, and holds her there for a minute or more. But when he finally kisses her, his mouth tastes of ash. 

* * *

**Three months after their wedding in the sept of Baelor, Jon learns he will be a father.**

Dany tells him she wants to name the boy Eddard, after the man who raised him, to please her nephew-husband-King.

The honor please Jon, it is true, and when he holds his son, the boy smiles up at his father with the same solemn, grey eyes that Jon remembers. He hopes he can raise little Ned to be as honorable and good as his namesake once was.

He loves his son deeply, like he has loved nothing before, not Ghost or Arya or Sansa. But the white white hair that springs from his head is disconcerting in the worst way. Jon ignores it in his wife, for every time he looks at her he sees another face. His eyes fill with the devotion he wishes he could shower on another, another who would never have him. But on his son, the truth of his heritage emerges and he cannot forget that he is a Targaryen like his father before him and his queen besides him, and that his blood has ruined his love with the people he once called family. At least he has a new one here.

Dany is a good wife and a better mother, teaching their son all the lessons about their house that Jon has never known. They both listen, enraptured by her tales of Balerion the Black Dread and Aegon the Conqueror, Alyssa Valaryon outwitting Maegor the Cruel, and all the rest of those ancient ancestors. As Eddard grows older and stronger, Jon too grows, becoming happier with the life he leads.

He learns of Sansa's wedding from a casual aside Sam makes in his regular letters. Jon drops the letter and does not pick it up for hours. Finally, he reads on, glad that Sansa had found happiness, someone to love, or so he hopes. She deserves someone true, someone brave, gentle, strong, who will love her for her.

King and father, two things he thought to never know, never dreamed to be, but his roles all the same. He embraces this life as the one that he has, but deep in his heart, Jon still dreams of winter.

**Author's Note:**

> Also you can hit me up at [tumblr](https://www.jonsainthenorth.tumblr.com) but I have zero time to make it pretty.


End file.
